Sabará Children's Hospital

Designed to become the largest pediatric complex in Latin America, the new Sabara Children’s Hospital will have the capacity to house up to 130,000 appointments per year, promoting pleasant aesthetic and sensory experiences in a structere with 120 inpatient beds and 60 ICU beds dedicated to pediatric and adolescent patients with complex diseases. Sabará’s new hospital follows the premise that children are people in development phase and, therefore, require spaces and processes that help them reach their full potential. To achieve this goal, the defined program accommodates the children’s families, offers activities focused on child growth, promotes stimulating experiences, and ensure the well-being of all the professionals involved in the treatment process. The building’s architecture itself welcomes users with an organic design, in which curves replace sharpe angles, as a strategy to favor the circulation and reinforce the idea of receptiveness that a hospital dedicated to children should convey. Glass panels cover the entire exterior, punctuated by vertical brise-soleils that control natural lighting in the interiors and give identity and rhythm to the façade. The lines dialogue with the columns on the ground floor - a double ceiling height space -, where the pilotis creates a wide roof, permeable to pedestrians and equally inviting for vehicles to get in and out of the hospital. Upon entering, a central atrium cuts the building vertically, through all the floors, up to the top of the largest volume. Longitudinal coverings and trees make the view upwards even more imposing and magical – like a tunnel connecting the earth and the sky or a portal to another dimension –, in a way that instigates children’s imagination. The mobile at the top of the atrium plays a similar role. Its organic shapes, light tones and different heights positions makes room for imagination: it can look like a forming cloud, falling rain, or even a small waterfall reflecting the sun’s brightness in gentle movements. These resources provide abundant natural light and act assertively in the integration with the exterior landscape. One of the hospital objectives is to provide infrastructure to well accommodate families during hospitalizations and treatments, since today 50% of Sabará’s patients are up to 5 years old, an age group that requires more time for medical treatment, hospitalization and attention. The new Sabará Children’s Hospital explore the influence of nature in human health. The well-being and serenity transmitted by natural elements - such as wood, textile and vegetation - combined to the lightness and subtlety of the children’s dreams universe make the building a powerful architectural synthesizes, that offer the better conditions to the body and mind of all people, at all ages. Construction: Afonso França Engenharia.